From The Armchair: The No Man’s Sky Plateau

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I’ve finally reached what I suppose is the No Man’s Sky plateau: I’ve maxed out the slots in my exosuit and multitool, I’ve almost maxed out my spaceship, and I’m starting to notice a fair bit of repetition in the planets I’ve been visiting. After my initial fever of exploration, it feels like the game is winding down into the all-too-familiar.

As the scathing criticism that the game has received from some reveals, it’s clearly not for everyone. Even our own Sir Gaulian bounced off the game hard. But I’ve found it to be right up my street. It’s just so relaxing – I’m essentially pottering around space, doing whatever I feel like and satisfying my insatiable curiosity about what’s around the next corner. It’s wonderful. I can happily spend hours just pootling around planets and scanning weird animals.

But sadly, the returns I’m getting from it are getting weaker and weaker. The animal scanning is getting less and less rewarding as I notice the same creature parts recycled again and again. But even so, occasionally the game will throw up something truly odd that demands my attention. Just the other night, I came across these huge bear-like things that fluttered around on utterly tiny wings – something truly unlike anything I’d seen before. Yet these kinds of discoveries are becoming rarer and rarer.

It was a bit like this thing, but without the weird legs and face…

It’s time to start winding down and aiming to put this thing to bed. I’m still eons away from the centre of the universe, but before I committed to gathering the necessary resources to head there, I thought I’d check to see whether it’s worth my time. It turns out it probably isn’t. So instead I’ve rejoined the Atlas Path, and already my game has been reinvigorated by a few all-new sights and encounters. It helps that I’ve already maxed out most of my exploration stats, so I can speed through the path to something that acts as a conclusion of sorts.

4 Comments

This might sound odd mate, but this is one of the most British things I’ve ever read. Probably because it reminded me of an Adam Hills’ sketch about Captain Cook arriving in Australia and saying “in a rare bit of English optimism, ‘well it is a bit shit, but maybe if we go around the corner it will get better.'”
That’s the spirit of exploration that won an empire!